Chinese companies authorized to produce Blu-ray products

[Bobby Henderson]

I have mixed feelings about the BDA allowing these Chinese manufacturers to get involved with making their old brands of Blu-ray Disc players. On one hand, it should be a goal to get Blu-ray players into the marketplace at or below the $199 price level to attract a greater degree of mainstream customers. The downside is if prices get too cheap then the market is poisoned and unprofitable.

Look at the DVD player market now. I feel sorry for any electronics salesperson who has to waste more than a couple of breaths selling one of those things to someone. The players are so cheap they're not worth spending effort to sell them. What kind of commission are you going to get from a $50 player? Some pocket change for the Coke machine? DVD players are now loss leader items designed to get people into stores and enticed to buy a TV or something else of real value.

Like it or not, Blu-ray is still a very young format that has not reached full maturity. Some players still have various glitches. Content creators (the movie studios) sometimes have glitches in their products. That situation requires manufacturers, movie studios and even the people who sell the product to make themselves available to provide help in case of any problems. That's what customer service is all about.

But customer service and technical support turn into luxury items when that electronics product suddenly costs less than a tank of gasoline for an ordinary car.

[aygie]

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?t=50900

Same name and all!!

[aygie]

https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread...d=1#post904336

Same name and all!!

[Wreck]

Originally Posted by WickyWoo

If you think they aren't going to be watched like a hawk, and they didn't have to do some heavy upfront deals to get this, you've got another thing coming

You aint lying.

[kamenriderrx]

Originally Posted by SDon1969

True, but that doesn't mean I'm happy about it. Especially working in the plastics industry - they are making it very difficult for us over there. Their compounds are often underperforming knock-offs of US-developed materials. Because they can get cheaper raw materials locally and even cheaper labor, they can afford to set a much-lower price point. All the plastic manufacturers (wire & cable, injection-molding, medical tubing, conduit, food & beveridge containers) are feeling the crunch of rising raw material costs, and they end up trying Chinese-made compounds to recoup some profits, taking away business from American owned & operated companies. Many times these cheap compounds don't even pass their specifications. It may be because of my unique situation in plastics R&D, but I am very resistant to purchasing Chinese products of any kind (I know, it's nearly impossible to avoid - unrealistic, even). Their business practices are likewise very shady.

I completely understand your fustration but who's really at fault. The companies over seas or the american companies that decide to give them their business KNOWING that it's lower quality but cheaper. I don't really get this "they are taking away our business" thing when it's the companies here that are going over there. You can't really blame someone for trying to get work no matter where they live. Just my two cents.

[dialog_gvf]

Originally Posted by Grubert

This is good news for future cheaper players.

One would just expect they will be kept on a tighter leash than they were with DVD WRT royalties and piracy.

There are (at least) two lines of defense:

(1) The SoC makers (like Sigma Designs) are required to verify a vendor is in good standing before shipping the critical chips.

(2) AACS supplies the disc authors with the data that allows the vendor's equipment access to the content. If the vendor somehow got around (1) the AACS could disable the vendor's slot(s) for subsequent releases making the player a doorstop. This would, of course, be a last resort.

Gary

[Octavio]

Great News. I own a DVD player Sony that is region 1 and NTSC AND a cheaper chinese one that is multi-region multi-format, multi-everything! It can play everything from DIVX to PAL discs (my Tv Set is NTSC). EVERYTHING.

of course my Sony "was" my default DVD player but it couldn't play lot's of formats or region encoded discs. In the other hand my chinese player CAN DO IT and cost me only about 25 bucks.

Now I am waiting for my Malata profile 2.0 multiregion both for BD and DVD's and capable of internally decoding any audio format.

The price? I bet it will be way cheaper than any other brand. Anyway I'll stick to my Sony BD player as my "default" player as I did with my DVD player, but the more choices the better for the consumer.

[Mr. Cinema]

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

Is ANYTHING made in America anymore?

Oh yeah, Toyota's...

How about Vizio TVs?

~Alan

Oppo BD players will be.

[WickyWoo]

Vizio is a front for a Chinese OEM

Oppo also has all their stuff built in China and they're headquartered in Canada

[X400]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

alot of that material comes from Malaysia and Hong Kong, not much from China

hk and malaysia get it from china, take it from a honger ^^ when you go to the hk source in china you can buy them for even cheaper oh man it was great just going 5mins over the border back in the day

[soccerb]

Is the name of these 11 companies made public? If so, anyone knows where I could find them?

[Mermen79]

Originally Posted by jwbbud

alot of that material comes from Malaysia and Hong Kong, not much from China

Hong Kong is in China and Malaysia is FULL of Chinese people (the majority). Yeah, piracy will finally start for BD when China gets involved but at least the legit Chinese manufacturer's will help bring down prices of players.

[rubberghost]

Originally Posted by Alan Gordon

Is ANYTHING made in America anymore?

Oh yeah, Toyota's...

How about Vizio TVs?

~Alan

and, Hondas
and, Hyundais
and, Mercedes

[xwingsct]

There's a pro and con to this.
Cheap players will lead to massive BD household penetration.
And of course, you get what you paid for. There's go the quality.
When DVD first became cheap. I picked up couple of them and they're crap. Not all disc will play including original disc.

[WriteSimply]

Originally Posted by X400

hk and malaysia get it from china, take it from a honger ^^ when you go to the hk source in china you can buy them for even cheaper oh man it was great just going 5mins over the border back in the day

Originally Posted by djepic112

Hong Kong is in China and Malaysia is FULL of Chinese people (the majority). Yeah, piracy will finally start for BD when China gets involved but at least the legit Chinese manufacturer's will help bring down prices of players.

Speaking from a standpoint of somebody who lives in Malaysia, I'd have to say that the majority of Malaysians are NOT of Chinese ethnicity. We're diverse and apparently somehow still manage to get our pirated lot from somewhere. The pirated DVDs we get ARE coming from certified replication plants however.

As far as HK is concerned, there is a difference between how it is treated by the administration. "Hongers" have also rejected mainland-style politics and politicians. In a round-about way, that means that HK's government still frowns upon piracy and looks to minimize it. The same is not true for China.

I don't know how much of X400's claim is true but it seems reasonable. Here's another reason why China's pirated DVDs are not found internationally - local demand.

Getting back on topic, I think this will be a good move. 32" LCDs are getting down in price so much that 29" CRT TVs are under threat. So a cheaper BD player is a good move in getting the world to adopt BD.

As far as disc replication is concerned, maybe the BDA should strictly control the licenses on that.


fuad

[WickyWoo]

As far as disc replication is concerned, maybe the BDA should strictly control the licenses on that.

It is

[Bobby Henderson]

Yeah, piracy will finally start for BD when China gets involved but at least the legit Chinese manufacturer's will help bring down prices of players.

There's two problems. 1. the pirates have to crack the Blu-ray encryption system which no one has done to this point. 2. the pirates will have to spend some serious money on Blu-ray replication hardware.

I think it's already a pretty stupid policy for Hollywood studios to make DVD screener discs for film critics and movie industry people. The DVD screeners are the primary source for movies being uploaded to the Internet before a new movie is released in theaters. They're also the preferred source for pirates able to do mass DVD replication.

If studios start handing out BD-based screener discs of movies before they're even in theaters it will provide a lot more incentive for pirates to crack the BD encryption system. The only other way pirates could get high definition content duplicated is by running 35mm release prints through a HD telecine (which could possibly deliver satisfactory results if everything was operating perfectly). They would get nowhere trying to use a D-Cinema hard disc since it has military grade encryption and all sorts of other stuff that requires the disc to "phone home" in order to work. Clearly the bull's eye would be painted on Blu-ray as a high definition target of opportunity.

[WickyWoo]

There's two problems. 1. the pirates have to crack the Blu-ray encryption system which no one has done to this point. 2. the pirates will have to spend some serious money on Blu-ray replication hardware.

It's been done, but with much greater implementation of BD+ (not just Fox) coming sooner rather than later, plus the fact that they won't be able to use the Blu replicators (fingerprinting plus they won't be able to do the proper prep work without a BDA cert tech. It's not like with DVD where you can master and home and hit "stamp")

They already do "borrow" prints and telecine them

Some studios are moving all rental screeners to online streams. Your user ID gets invisibly encoded into the footage so they know who leaks a password if it happens. If it works out for them you can bet everyone is going to move to those. You'll still see Blu reviews being done from physical product. All those screeners are for is so that video stores know what they're buying

[ranma]

Originally Posted by soccerb

Is the name of these 11 companies made public? If so, anyone knows where I could find them?

http://www.blu-raydisc.info/flla_lic...rommovieplayer

[Bobby Henderson]

Wicki, which movies have been cracked? It seems like every time someone in the press has tried floating the claim Blu-ray has been cracked the same reporter ends up back-pedaling when pressed for specifics about titles that have been cracked and uploaded to the Internet.

Regarding screener discs, video stores are not the primary user. The discs are made before the movie is released in commercial theaters. They're distributed to movie critics and other industry people who are "too good" to sit in a commercial movie theater with a bunch of other common folks to watch a press screening or some other pre-release affair.

Buyers for video stores do get access to screener discs, but their primary need for such items is movies that couldn't get movie theater bookings or simply went straight to video. A lot of that product is utter sludge -not worth wasting 2 hours of your life watching it even for free.

Video store buyers don't really need screener discs for theatrical releases since they already have a box office numbers in various world markets giving them a clue on what they need to buy.